CHARACTERS DRIVEN BY FRUSTRATION- CON’T BY RITA KARNOPP #writingtips

Reactions to frustration are also known as defense mechanisms because they try to defend individuals from the psychological effects of a blocked goal. When people get frustrated, they become edgy and cross. They experience uneasiness and also show various reactions of frustration.

Understanding the causes and responses of frustration will help you decide what triggers your character.  Does your character respond with sarcasm, insults, alpha male postulations, impatience, anger, false humility, bitterness, or even turn to drinking or violence?

Plotting from frustration reflects what motivates your character and how he responds, counters, and even changes as the results of his actions.  Get excited when your character instinctively reacts when he doesn’t get what he wants. Can his reaction provide you with plot ideas?

Absolutely!  I’m convinced showing internal and external frustration is the difference between believable and unbelievable characters.  Never assume your reader knows what your character is feeling.  Dig deep and portray what you want your reader to know and how you want them to react through your character’s actions and emotional frustration.

It’s important to note that frustration is not a pure emotion.  It’s that hair-pulling, beyond comprehension, foot-stomping, annoyed beyond reason emotion that drives our characters into nail-biting situations that we love in a novel.

Frustration fuels our plot, makes our characters agitated and unsatisfied, and grips the reader page after page.  Always remember when you keep your characters from getting what they want - it creates frustration.  I call frustration the heartbeat of my story.

You and I want to avoid or handle frustrations – but it’s imperative our characters don’t.   We truly get to know our characters by how they react to frustration.  It’s the fuel that propels your story forward.  I’d like to suggest frustration is emotional gold.

Make sure your characters handle frustration in their own way.  People don’t react the same way to frustration, and neither should your characters.  Understanding this emotion will help you create believable emotion – which creates believable characters.

Some examples?  Crying, depression, accusations, revenge, self-deprivation, addiction, ignoring the issue, arguing, verbal and physical attacks, and even running from the problem.  It’s endless for sure.

Make sure you stay true to the core of your character’s values and they will react internally and externally in-character.  Keep in mind reactions to frustration must progress as the risks even dangers escalate, but stay within reason.

The next time you feel frustrated – take a moment and analyze what emotions you’re feeling and write them down.  Be honest – if it’s anger or hurt or even heartbreak.  Don’t miss the opportunity to evaluate the range of emotions your frustrations take you.  Give those same internal and external emotions to your characters, and your reader will believe every word.

  

CHARACTERS DRIVEN BY FRUSTRATION- CON’T BY RITA KARNOPP #writingtips

A more direct, and common response, is a propensity toward aggression.

Causes – External factors usually contributes to an individual experiencing anger. This emotion is beyond his or her control.

A character might experience mild frustration due to internal emotions.  It’s more often than not perceived as an uncontrollable problem, but then prods more severe and perhaps pathological anger.

An individual suffering from pathological anger will often feel powerless to change the situation they’re in, leading to and, if left uncontrolled, further anger.

This can result in blocking motivated behavior. An individual may react in several different ways. He may react with sensible problem-solving means to overcome the difficulty.  Failing, he’ll become aggravated, disturbed, annoyed, discouraged, and behave illogically and even deceptively.  

An example of blockage of motivational energy would be the case of a worker who wants to go skiing but is denied time off by his boss. How about the construction worker who’s denied a job promotion?  She’s a woman in a man’s world and doesn’t see her qualifications are absent required trainings.

If the injustice isn’t resolved reasonably, the frustrated individual may resort to unsavory methods to reach his/her goal. He might call in sick and go skiing anyway.  She might falsify her qualifications to show them!

Symptoms - Frustration can be deemed a problem–response behavior, and can have a number of outcomes or consequences, depending on the mental health of the individual.

In optimistic cases, frustration will build until it’s too great for the individual to deal with, and will consequently strive to resolve the inherent conundrum.  In pessimistic cases, however, his perception of the source of frustration is out of his control.  Therefore, his frustration will continue to build, evolving eventually to further difficult, challenging, and even violent behavior.

Persistent and adamant refusal to comply to new expectations affecting their goals or responsibilities, such as time sheets or training certifications, sometimes occur. Severe punishment may trigger individuals to be confrontational and result in non-accommodating behavior, giving you entirely the opposite results you desire.

Now, understanding all the above, you need to keep in mind that frustration becomes an important tool for plotting.  Frustrations means there’s conflict, rising emotions, and someone is not happy because they aren’t getting what they want.

Let’s tie this up tomorrow when we discuss how all this frustration will mean believable characters that drive your plot.

CHARACTERS DRIVEN BY FRUSTRATION BY RITA KARNOPP #writingtips

There is nothing stronger than using emotion to create strong characters that drive your plot and create an exciting, strong book.

There’s a wide range of emotions we use to heighten our plots and create motivation.  If you can add frustration to the mix - you’ve discovered a tool like no other to thrust your story forward.

So how can you use frustration to propel your story?  The Wikipedia explains that in psychology, frustration is a common emotional response to opposition. Related to anger and disappointment, it arises from the perceived resistance to the fulfillment of individual will. (I had to read that three times to get it!)  In other words, when a person really wants something – and they don’t get it – anger and disappointment results.

The greater the obstruction, and the greater the will, the more the frustration is likely to be. Important to understand and develop in your plot.

Causes of frustration may be internal or external.  This can be used in so many good and evil ways in your story.

In people, internal frustration may arise from challenges in fulfilling personal goals and desires, instinctual drives and needs, or dealing with perceived deficiencies, such as a lack of confidence or fear of social situations.  Can you believe that is one sentence?  Okay… so internal frustration is driven by the belief we are inept or unable to fulfill our goals.  This creates fear or a lack of confidence.

Conflict can also be an internal source of frustration; when one has competing goals that interfere with one another, it can create cognitive dissonance.  Internal conflict is a source of frustration that has a character fighting the need to do wrong, when he knows what’s right.  Use this internal conflict to show his reasoning or thinking through conflict, discord, and even opposition.

External causes of frustration involve conditions outside an individual, such as a blocked road or a difficult task.  We create diverse external causes of frustration all the time.  This tool can create an unexpected event that sends your normally calm character over the edge and lose control.  Or it’s the external frustration that propels your already stressed character past control.  It’s the unexpected interruptions and the foil to the perfect plan.

While coping with frustration, some individuals may engage in passive–aggressive behavior, making it difficult to identify the original cause(s) of their frustration, as the responses are indirect. Passive-aggressive behavior is the indirect expression of hostility, such as stalling, sarcasm, unpleasant jokes, inflexibility, resentment, hostility, or repetitive failure to accomplish requested tasks for which he is responsible.

Tomorrow we’ll discuss the propensity toward aggression.